“So what?”
“So they’re apt to set aside the conviction and give him a new trial.”
“All right. Let them do it.”
“But the point is,” Clane said, “that under the law a defendant has no right to press an appeal unless he is abiding by the law. If he has escaped and is holding himself in defiance of the law, he loses the benefit of it. He can’t carry an appeal to the Supreme Court while he is a fugitive from justice. The district attorney is planning to go into court tomorrow morning and move for a dismissal of the appeal. You know what that will mean. Once the appeal is dismissed, all hope is gone. When Edward Harold is captured, he’ll be sent directly to the death house — only the intervention of the governor can save him. And It’s hardly possible that the governor will exert himself to save the life of a man who has escaped from the custody of officers at the point of a gun.”
“I tell you they won’t ever take Edward alive.”
“All right,” Clane said. “What I want is for Edward Harold to surrender.”
“Never.”
“I want him to walk into jail and give himself up, and I want to go ahead and work on that case. I want to help with the appeal. I want to try and unearth some new evidence.”
“Edward doesn’t intend to give himself up.”
Clane went on patiently, “We have to be very careful. We’ve got to arrange things so that it’s done dramatically and spectacularly. We must smuggle him right up to the doors of the jail so that he can walk up and surrender. Or else go to one of the newspaper offices and surrender to the newspaper. But you can see what will happen if he can’t do one of these things cleverly enough. If some officer catches him while he’s on his way to the jail to surrender himself, no amount of protestation on the part of Harold that he was going to give himself up would be of any avail. The officer will pull the old publicity stuff. Newspaper reporters who like to keep in good with the officers will dish out the usual tripe that while Patrolman John Doe was walking to the bus line after his shift on duty he kept his eye op passing pedestrians, mentally checking off each face against the wanted list, which he studied daily, a practice which he had diligently followed for some twenty years. And last night it paid off in a big way because among the hurrying pedestrians John Doe found the face of the one man whom police were seeking more diligently than...”
“Owl, stop it,” she commanded.
“You see what I mean, Cynthia. He has to surrender. It has to be accomplished in such a manner that...”
“I tell you he isn’t going to surrender. He’ll never surrender. He prefers to die fighting. The mockery of it all! The judge forcing the prisoner to stand up, going through all that rigmarole of asking him if he has anything to say why sentence should not be pronounced, and telling him that he’s going to die. I hate it. I hate the damn hypocrisy of it — the smug lawyers, careful to keep their faces turned at just the right angle so that when the photographers shoot pictures of the courtroom scene, they’ll get Mr. District Attorney and Mr. Attorney-for-the-Defense in a properly impressive pose. I tell you, Owl, he’ll never give himself up. Never, never, never.”
“And then of course there’s your own position in the matter to be considered.”
“Not to be considered,” she said.
“What sort of a chap is Edward Harold?” Clane asked.
“He’s a man who fights against injustices,” she said. “He’s always sympathized with the underdog, always tried to do what he could for the man who was down. And it makes him furious whenever he hears of cases of oppression. He loves life. He loves liberty. He says that the one thing he asks of life is freedom of choice. And imagine a man like that in a scrape like this.”
“You love him very, very much?” Clane asked.
She abruptly snapped on the ignition.
“Where’s your appointment?” she asked.
“Don’t bother to drive me there. Take me to where I can get a cab.”
“No, I’ll take you there.”
She had taken off the emergency brake and was easing the car into motion as Clane gave her the address.
Abruptly her foot slammed down the brake pedal. She turned to him as though he had struck her. “Terry, what are you doing?”
“Giving you the address of the place I want to go.”
“What are you trying to do? Are you playing with me as a cat plays with a mouse, doing that old stunt of yours of reading people’s minds...”
“Take it easy, Cynthia. What’s all the commotion about? I simply am going to this address to meet George Gloster. I think it’s the warehouse of the Eastern Art Import and Trading Company.”
“And George Gloster is going to meet you there?”
“Yes.”
She released her foot from the brake, slammed the car into gear, shot out into the middle of the street, took the corner in second, slapped the gear-shift lever back into high as she straightened out on the boulevard.
“We’re not going to a fire,” Clane said.
Her lips were pressed together in a firm, straight line. “That’s what you may think,” she said.
“What,” Clane asked, “is the idea?”
She flung words at him over her shoulder, her eyes watching the fog-shrouded street intersections as the car went screaming by. “Edward Harold,” she said, “has been concealed in the Eastern Art Import and Trading Company’s warehouse. You can see what will happen if George Gloster goes there. How long has he been there?”
“I don’t know. He telephoned me to meet him there just before I left the apartment and...”
“You don’t know whether he was there then or just going there?”
“No.”
Cynthia choked back something which could have been a sob. “And all the time we’ve been talking,” she said, “Edward Harold has been there and...” She didn’t finish the sentence.
She didn’t need to.
Nine
The warehouse was dark, a gloomy, forbidding building which fronted on a narrow street near the waterfront. Down here the fog had settled until the headlights of Cynthia’s car seemed boring through a tunnel of watered milk.
Cynthia swung the car into the narrow side street, braked it to a stop, pushed open the door on her side and was out almost before Clane had his door open.
She didn’t wait for him but started running toward the entrance to the warehouse.
“Take it easy, Cynthia,” Clane cautioned, moving along behind her with long swinging strides. “Let’s try and find out first what...”
His words were wasted. She was running.
Clane’s hand, dropping to the right-hand coat pocket, found the automatic which Yat T’oy had so thoughtfully put there. His left hand encountered a small pocket electric torch.
The entrance of the building was shrouded in darkness, but the beam of Clane’s tiny flashlight showed that the door was slightly ajar, and through the swirling, thick fog he could dimly make out the bulk of an automobile parked at an angle, pulled up off the road and across the sidewalk, an automobile which seemed comfortably ensconced off the right of way and on private property, as though it were resting in a familiar parking place.
Clane called through the crack in the doorway. “Hello in there. Is anyone home? This is Terry Clane, Gloster. You there?”
There was no answer, no sound save water dripping from the eaves of the building.
Cynthia, heedless of Terry Clane’s warning, pushed open the door, groped for a light switch. Terry Clane’s flashlight furnished an illumination which enabled her to locate the switch. She clicked it on and lights disclosed the interior of the warehouse.